


Turbulence

by apparitionism



Series: Dynamics [5]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-12 23:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2127906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the interest of more in the Bering and Wells tag, it is that other ballet AU again. Please see notes for what I was given leave to write into a story... I thought about stars and glasses, and this is where it led. All I can say in defense of it is that I am a fool for love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turbulence

**Author's Note:**

> This one happened because the glasses in [amatterofcomplication’s manip](http://amatterofcomplication.tumblr.com/post/92193712121) led deathtodickens to draw a [magnificently romantic doodle](http://deathtodickens.com/post/92270855000/bering-wells-and-the-endless-ballet-because), and that is what she was kind enough to say I could write into a story. And thus the foolishness of love.

“Ugh,” Myka says when she puts down her phone. “I can’t believe this.”

“Can’t believe what?” Helena asks. She is sitting on the floor with a foam roller under her thigh, working out a kink she’s been complaining about since she got home.

Myka is trying to hold back, at least for a little while, from volunteering her services as a masseuse. “Well, it’s not as bad as a balky hamstring, but I have to wear my glasses tomorrow. And Wednesday. They’re very sorry to have completely blown off ordering my new contacts, but there’s no way now to get them to me sooner than Wednesday afternoon.”

“You’re right,” Helena says, “it’s not nearly as bad as a balky hamstring.” But her tone is playful.

And Myka gives up. She doesn’t want to be an inch away from Helena, ever, and certainly not when they’re in the same room, the same room at home—well, technically this is still Helena’s home, because Myka still has her own apartment, because there’s a lease that won’t be up for another month. But after that… after that, they’ll officially live together, and then after _that_ , they’ll officially promise to live together for the rest of their lives. It’s all happened so fast that Myka feels giddy, but she also feels absolutely certain. “Need some help with that hamstring?” she offers.

“I thought you’d never ask.” Helena turns, almost ungracefully, onto her stomach. “This is not a ploy, by the way,” she says as Myka kneels down and begins to knead the back of her leg.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Myka says, but she moves Helena’s hair out of the way and leans over to kiss the back of her neck, just in case.

“Well, no more than your glasses situation,” Helena tells her.

“How is my glasses situation a ploy? It mostly means I won’t be able to see very well through these old lenses. I wouldn’t think you’d find watching me run into things particularly seductive.”

“For me it mostly means I’ll be thinking all day, instead of just right before bed, about when I get to take those glasses off you.”

Myka fake-pouts. “You mean you don’t think about that all day now? I’m hurt. I think about what I’m going to take off of _you_ all day.”

“Do you? I wouldn’t have taken you for that kind of girl. You’re far too serious, far too focused for that.”

“That’s what I’m serious _about_. That’s what I’m focused _on_.”

“Focus on my hamstring for just another minute,” Helena says. “Then we’ll see what we can do about that other business.”

Myka leans down and kisses her neck again. “Another whole minute?” she whispers in Helena’s ear.

“Focus!” Helena instructs. But then she turns over onto her back and reaches up.

****

“You can go on in,” says Claudia. She’s Myka’s new assistant, a smart girl; Helena doesn’t know her well yet but likes her already. Far better than the previous assistant, a young man who (Helena has not told Myka this) looked at Helena a bit unnervingly.

“You’re sure it’s all right?” Helena asks. Myka’s office is actually incredibly posh; until several months ago, Helena had not known how truly mindboggling were the amounts of money in athletic apparel.

“Yeah, she’s got one of her athletes in there, but you’re the fiancée.”

At this, Helena smiles. “It’s still a bit new, that.”

“Pretty cool, if you ask me,” Claudia tells her. “Whoops. Which you didn’t.”

“If your opinion is that it’s ‘pretty cool,’ you certainly don’t need to wait to be asked to offer it.”

“That’s pretty cool, too.”

In the office, Myka is kneeling in front of a woman, a beautiful blonde, in a swimsuit. She is looking closely at something, eyeing a seam perhaps, and she has one hand on the woman’s thigh. She looks up at the woman and smiles, and the woman touches Myka’s glasses, tugging at them as Helena does, at night, before bed. “Same specs, I see,” the woman says. “But it’s daytime, Mykes.”

“Problem with my contacts,” Myka says, and there is intimacy, familiarity in her voice; it’s a voice Helena had thought was for her alone.

Helena can feel, gathering in her body, the same tension that sets in when she senses a man’s arms quivering during a lift. She stands and breathes, her mouth closed, her breath moving more and more audibly through her nostrils, until Myka hears, or more probably senses; she looks up and says, “Helena?” She brings her hands to her glasses, pushes them awry, pushes them level, pushes them up; then she stands up. Far too quickly, Helena thinks. Far too quickly. “This is Amanda,” Myka says, but Helena couldn’t care less what this woman’s name is, because Helena is being cut open, flayed by the thought that this is how Myka _was_ , how she was for _years_ , that Helena herself is _lately_ here, _lately_ to this place, whatever it is, in Myka’s life, and she had accused Myka of being late, but that was wrong. Other women have been here before Helena. She has not wanted to think about that; she has not wanted to think that that could matter. But in this instant, it is all that matters, and all she can see is Myka and this woman, together—“And Amanda, this is Helena Wells,” Myka goes on.

“Myka’s dancer!” says the swimmer. “Hey, I think I saw you once. Maybe in _Swan_ _Lake_?”

“I’ve never danced _Swan_ _Lake_. Not as a principal,” Helena says with difficulty. She can’t look at Myka, can’t bear to think that Myka is looking at the swimmer, remembering the swimmer.

“Sorry. I was always mostly either in the pool or hitting the books; never knew much about those finer things, did I, Mykes? Not like your fancy family,” the swimmer says. She is cheerful. She is voluble and cheerful, and Helena has never been those things.

“Not really,” Myka agrees. She laughs a little, and that laugh, too, Helena thought was hers.

“I see you aren’t free,” Helena says. She turns to leave.

“Don’t go on my account,” the swimmer says. “Mykes, we can be done, right? And we’re good?”

“We’re good,” Myka says. “Tell Claudia to put it on my calendar, and I’ll meet you at the pool. We’ll see how it moves in the water.”

“Love it.” She pulls on sweatpants, a T-shirt. “See ya, honey. Good to meet you, Helena.”

“Say hey to Pete,” Myka calls after her.

“Will do…” floats back.

Myka comes to Helena, leans as if to kiss her. Helena absolutely cannot imagine doing that; she backs away. Myka asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Helena says, keeping herself together as well as she can.

“I’m surprised to see you. I wasn’t expecting you till later.”

“I can see that,” Helena says. Even as she says it, she can feel something veering from its track.

“So what’s up?” Myka asks, as if everything is normal.

“I don’t know,” Helena says. She is trying not to say anything, trying not to do anything, and that is making everything ten times worse, because the next thing that comes out of her mouth is, “Why don’t _you_ tell _me_.” And her tone is wrong and awful, and if she could take it back she would, but right now she _cannot_ take it back, because it _is_ what she meant to say, and she said it exactly the way she meant to say it.

Myka says, “You came to see me so you could… pick a fight?”

“No,” Helena snaps. “I came to see you… to see you. And I see you with…”

“With?” Myka sounds bewildered.

Helena can’t believe that Myka is truly that oblivious. It is an act, then. “With your swimmer.”

“With my… wait, you’re upset about Amanda? You think… no, Helena, that’s so over. That was over ages ago. We weren’t—I mean, for a while we were, but it didn’t—I mean, it should be obvious that I—”

“Stop fumbling around. It isn’t becoming.” Now Helena knows she must get away. For now, for all time, she doesn’t know which. But she cannot be here.

“What is wrong with you?” Myka asks, and the bewilderment now has an edge. “Are you jealous? Are you going to flip like this whenever you run into somebody I used to date?”

“‘Date’ seems a mild word for what you and she _clearly_ did. And I don’t know. How many times is that likely to happen?”

“Less than for you!” Myka says. It’s an accusation.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Helena demands. Myka is not the injured party here; Myka is not the one who has witnessed, who has been forced to observe, the evidence of Helena’s intimacy with someone else.

“Listen, I have spent enough time with dancers over the past several months to get a good earful about how many you loved and left, and part of that from some that you did love and leave. Don’t tell me you don’t know how your former conquests talk about you. Apparently there’s not much chance I’m going to be able to hang onto you. I hear words like _stamina_ and _flexibility_ and _tone_ , and I guess I’m pretty deficient in all those areas, not being a dancer. How do you think that makes _me_ feel?”

“I don’t particularly care how it makes you feel,” Helena says, and she says it because she can’t see through how _she_ feels, but—the fact that she’s said that, that she _could_ say it, seems to change everything.

“Well,” Myka says. “Thanks. Good to know.”

Helena’s face is hot, and her mouth is a thin, tight line, and her breath is audible again, and she turns and grabs the door handle, turning and pushing as best she can.

“You’re leaving? You’re just walking out?”

Helena doesn’t say anything.

****

“I just don’t understand what happened,” Myka says. She is sitting at her sister’s kitchen table. “I mean, yes, Amanda was there, but I didn’t… we weren’t doing anything! Why in the world would I?”

Tracy brings a bottle and two glasses from the kitchen; she pours Myka a glass of wine, pours herself one. “I’m just assuming you’re drinking what I’m drinking.” At Myka’s nod, she says, “Okay. You and Amanda were pretty close, though, even after.”

“We still are,” Myka says. She sips at the wine, then tries and fails to resist the temptation to gulp.

Tracy pats her on the head, pours her some more. “I know. And you two have always been… I don’t know, easy together. I remember being sad when you broke up, because you got along so well. I thought she could have been the one.”

“No, we got to that point, where we would have had to really… and neither of us felt right about it. As opposed to usually.”

“Where it was just you.”

“Yeah.”

“You dated some nice women.”

“I know.”

“But you didn’t love them.”

“No.”

“And you love Helena.”

“More than anything.” Myka puts her head down on the table. “But I guess this means she’s having second thoughts. I _knew_ I was moving too fast!”

Tracy says, “You didn’t know any such thing. All you knew was that you wanted to put a ring on it as soon as possible. You would have asked her after _one_ month, not three, if you could have worked up the nerve. You would have asked her after one _week_. You were beside yourself. Maybe you’re the one who’s having second thoughts, not her.”

“But I’m not! My thoughts are the same as they’ve always been.”

“So maybe hers are too.”

“But then why won’t she answer me? I called, I texted. She won’t answer.”

“This is just a guess, but she’s probably embarrassed. She was jealous; she overreacted; and then you got mad at her.”

“Well I don’t think that was _unjustified_ , given—”

“I didn’t say it was unjustified; I said you got mad at her. It’s a fight, sis. You’re lost because a fight with a girlfriend always used to mean you’d just told them it was over and it wasn’t them, it was you. But you didn’t say that to Helena, did you.”

“No,” Myka says, “But what if it _is_ me?”

“In this case, I don’t think it’s anybody,” Tracy tells her.

They finish the bottle of wine, open a second one. Myka spends the night on Tracy’s sofa—partly because she certainly can’t drive home, but partly because she isn’t certain where home really is tonight.

****

Helena spends the greater part of the evening and night in a bar with Liam and Steve. “All I could see was that woman,” she says. “And she was _familiar_ with Myka, and she was _touching her glasses_.”

Liam says, “I don’t get it. Is that code for something?”

Steve shushes him. “It doesn’t matter if it’s code. She’s upset about it.”

Liam shrugs. “Well, anyway, just tell her you were upset, and you don’t want anybody else _touching her glasses_ , whatever it means.”

“I don’t think she wants me to tell her much of anything anymore.”

“Anymore? She broke _up_ with you?” Steve doesn’t generally gasp in horror, but now he comes very close.

Now Helena tries to shrug, but she is almost crying. “I don’t know what happened. One minute I was looking forward to seeing her, thinking about how much I love her, and the next… I was so angry I could barely speak. “

Steve says, sounding aggrieved, “That sounds like a normal morning at our house.”

Liam brays out a laugh. “It’s true. So here’s what you do: you pour her a bowl of Count Chocula, and you offer to go to Starbucks to get her her coffee drink of choice.”

“I can’t do that,” Helena says.

“Why not?”

“First, she doesn’t eat sugar.” It’s a non sequitur, but she is stalling.

“Okay,” Steve says. “I think you’re maybe focusing too closely on the details of the plan. The whole point is, you talk to her.”

“But I can’t!” Helena says. Why can’t they see?

“I really kind of think you’re going to have to at some point,” Liam tells her.

“But what if I’ve destroyed everything?” Helena begs.

Another, softer bray from Liam. “So wait. You’re never going to talk to her again, just so you don’t have to find out whether or not she ever wants to talk to you again?”

Helena knows it sounds ridiculous when he _says_ it, but it is on some level the only thing that makes sense to her right now.

He says, “I love you, Giselle, but you’re crazy, you know that, right?”

Steve tells him, “Don’t be mean to her.”

“I’m not being mean! I’m telling her what she should already know: she freaked out on her girlfriend, and now she has to fix it!”

“Oh,” Steve says.

“Oh what?” Liam raises his eyebrows at Steve.

Steve tells Helena, “You’ve never bothered to fix anything like this before, have you?”

“Oh,” says Helena.

****

Five a.m.: a bleary-eyed Myka gets a text from Helena: “Pick up contacts optometrist’s office 3pm.” And Myka despairs, thinking that Helena doesn’t even want to see her for the moment it would take to hand off a box of contact lenses.

Three fifteen p.m.: a slightly less bleary-eyed Myka trudges into her optometrist’s office. Helena is standing at the front desk, tapping her foot. “Why are you _always_ late?” she asks.

“I have no idea what’s happening,” Myka says.

“I am trying to fix this,” Helena tells her. “The first step is, you get new glasses.”

“Okay,” Myka says. “Why exactly is that the first step?”

“Two reasons. First, you can’t see in those old things. Second, though, I want you wearing glasses that…” and Myka sees her take a deep breath, “that no one but me will ever take off of you.” She scowls down at the floor, then looks up, still frowning, at Myka again. “Is that all right?”

“Ah… yes?”

The frown disappears. “Good. Let’s pick out frames.” She practically jetés to a display featuring designer names.

Myka follows, wondering for a moment whether, and then deciding that it is certainly the case that, her life from now on is going to be one long lesson in how to survive whiplash.

****

Two days later, Myka has her new glasses, and she has to admit that they do help her see more clearly. Far more clearly, even, than she can see with her contacts in, and that’s something of a help, work-wise.

“If they help you, then you should wear them,” Helena says. “Also, they’re very becoming.”

“Really?” Myka asks.

“Really. Time for step two,” Helena tells her, even though Myka had thought they were already back to normal… a slightly hesitant normal, but Myka hasn’t spent another night away from home. And it is still home.

“What’s step two?” Myka asks.

“Meet me after the performance tonight. On the roof.”

“We can’t access the roof of this building.”

“Not this building. The theater.”

****

Myka doesn’t realize until she’s trying to find her way to the roof of the theater that she has no idea how to get to the roof of the theater. So she has to find someone to ask, someone who knows, and by the time they’ve explained and Myka has deciphered the explanation, she’s pretty sure Helena will have given up completely on whatever step two is, and she’ll be rethinking the wisdom of step one as well, and she’ll want to go back to the situation as it was before any steps at all happened.

“I’m sorry,” Myka starts saying, as soon as she opens the door and steps out onto the roof. “I know I’m late, and it’s because I couldn’t find it, and I had to get help, and most people don’t know, so that took forever, and…” And then she looks. She sees dim candlelight. She sees roses. She sees Helena, who is still in costume. She has shed her toe shoes, but she still is every inch the prima.

“It occurred to me,” Helena says, “that we have never danced together.”

“That whole summer?” Myka offers.

“No, you put your hands on me while I danced, or rather, while I practiced steps. That is not the same thing at all. You think I want to be with a dancer? All right then, come be a dancer.”

“I can’t dance with you. I can’t dance at all.” Myka had of course tried taking ballet classes when she was young: she was around ballet all the time, and the dancers were beautiful, perfect beings. Of course she had wanted to be like them, to move and soar as they did. She had barely begun to thump her way through the positions when she suffered her first real growth spurt. She was taller even than the two boys in her class, and she couldn’t stand the embarrassment of seeing herself in the rehearsal studio’s mirror, her gangly limbs at all angles, while the arms and legs of the other children formed graceful curves. When she thinks of Helena comparing her body to the bodies of dancers… _intimately_ comparing her body… she dies of embarrassment all over again.

“Like this?” Helena asks, and she steps to Myka, pulls her into an embrace. “Like this, you’re the only one who can.”

And they do dance, or maybe they are just swaying together, but Myka has her arms around Helena, and she never ever wants to let go.

At some point, Myka looks up at the sky. She can see the stars through her new lenses, can see them as twinkling points rather than yellow-white blurs against black, for the first time in what feels like a very long time. “Do you know what makes the stars twinkle?” she asks Helena.

“I have no idea,” Helena says. Then she smiles. “Perhaps they’re dancing.”

“Atmospheric turbulence,” Myka tells her.

“Hm,” Helena says. “I like my explanation better.”

“Hm,” Myka echoes. “I do too.”

****

Months later, as part of her vows, Helena says, “I have heard that without some turbulence, the stars cannot twinkle.”

And part of Myka wants to say, “Stop the ceremony. No need. I married her on a rooftop eight months ago.” Instead, she says, “No… without some turbulence, they can’t dance.”

END


End file.
